UN demands action over meme crisis

The United Nations issued an urgent plea today, following an emergency meeting of the Security Council, calling for action from all developed nations to alleviate the shortage of memes which has already devastated large portions of the internet.

“If you’d told me last August that people would still be making LOLcats in May 2008, I would have laughed. Out loud”, commented Richard McGoggin, lead researcher at web monitoring firm, InSite Analytics. “But I don’t think anyone could have predicted how quickly things would change.

“The references just became too insular and weird. This was fine in a strong market, where casual consumers are easily intrigued, but as the market has matured, there’s been a real sense of… well.. boredom. Boredom and anger.”

The shortage, which has its roots in the US but has spread quickly worldwide, has been most keenly felt in b3ta.com and boingboing.net, where all foreign bloggers have been ejected and pirate hats, ninja throwing stars and “cheezburgers” are reportedly being rationed.

Brock Louche, the UN special rapporteur on memes, said: “While we have seen similar challenges in the past, the current crisis has been exacerbated by the failure of several weak memes over the past six months.

“Using flow charts to explain things you wouldn’t normally use them to explain seemed like a good idea to start with, but then everyone got distracted by pie charts, which was really a dead end.

"A lot of people have turned to illustrating news stories using Lego men. No civilised society would call that a meme and it saddens me deeply to see it."

The UN statement follows strong criticism of the Western democracies, over their response to the crisis. To date, the UK and France have donated just 5,000 unicorns, of a promised 45,000, while the United States has not yet made any headway on its pledge to air-drop 150,000 banjo-playing polar bears.

“While hopelessly outdated, even these memes would make a real difference in the short term”, concluded Louche. “But we need to begin thinking about the longer term. Unless we can secure a reliable supply of new memes, literally millions will be forced to make jokes other people can understand. I, for one, don’t ever want to see that.”